NaPo 2026 Information
Who doesn't love to crack open a jar of strawberry preserves, blueberry jam, or pickled green beans and be transported back to harvest season? This year, join poetry crew in saving a little moment of now to savor another day! Collect the best, the mess, the over-grown, and carefully cultivated into your poetry threads as we treasure this beautiful month of writing together!
This is your Information Center for all things National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 2026. Here you can raid the kitchen for ingredients, activities, and inspiration and browse through our lovely jar cellar to see what your friends have been crafting up.
Jam is nice, but it's twice as nice sharing with someone else! This month, we encourage you to share your sweet poetry and all the messy drafts in between! We challenge you to share some encouragement with each other and follow each other's writing journeys! (You might even pick up a recipe tip or two!) We also encourage you to challenge yourself - how would you know you like raspberry flavored asparagus unless you tried it! Reach for the stars, stretch those goals, and see what happens!
If you have a Poetry Jam, a contest, a prompt, a question, or really anything else poetry related during April that you'd like to share - you are more than welcome to comment below! Let's collect our jars and see what sweet poetry we can create together!
What is National Poetry Month aka NaPo?
National Poetry Month is celebrated all over the globe and is a month-long celebration of all things poetry during the month of April. The classic challenge is to write 30 Poems in 30 days, one for every day in April. You don't have to do 30 poems to participate in NaPo on YWS though, in fact, there'll be a host of challenges and opportunities to earn badges too. (YWS's Poetry Challenges can all be found in our Badge Thread link coming soon.)
In addition to being challenged to write poetry, we'd also love for you to join us in reading poetry by commenting on other people's NaPo threads and joining in our poetry discussions and write-ins throughout the month too! While cultivating your own thread, don't be afraid to share a spoonful of encouragement and joy with your neighbor - even if it's just a small comment or a few likes on their thread. This is what makes NaPo so fun on a Social Community-Geared Site like YWS.
How do I participate in NaPo?
To participate in National Poetry Month, you actually don't have to post your poems through the publishing center (though you are encouraged to fill the lit center with poetry this month). To be considered for the badges and also to let everyone else admire your poetry please make a new thread (just one) in the NaPoWriMo Forum to post your poems in. If you're interested in working towards the Badges please be sure to number your poems!
As a little thread maintenance we do ask poets to observe two things!
* If you are using mature themes or strong language in your poetry, be sure to use a content warning or rating indication before the poem to give readers a heads up please.
* Please choose "comments welcome" as a sticker on your thread if you are open to comments and refrain from commenting on threads that don't have that sticker. Leaving comments is a great way to support and encourage each other during NaPo. Watch out for other ways to participate in Poetry Jams (poetry-write-ins), discussions, and contests throughout the month.
We'll be getting the rest of the informational threads up in the next week to hopefully cover all the other basics, but until then, if you have questions don't hesitate to ask!
- Poetry Crew 2026
